1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and method for proximity touch sensing.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the growing distribution of a portable terminal in recent years, the portable terminal has become necessity of modern life. The portable terminal can provide not only a unique voice telephony service but also a variety of data transmission services and various value-added services, and thus is functionally used as a multimedia communication device. With the increase in services that can be provided by the portable terminal, a user interface (UI) technique for controlling the portable terminal has been continuously developed.
A portable terminal employing a proximity sensor has been launched in the prior art. The portable terminal performs a specific function by recognizing whether a user is proximate to the portable terminal
A representative example of the proximity sensor of the prior art includes a photodiode-based proximity sensor. The proximity sensor includes a light emitting unit and a light receiving unit. In general, the light emitting unit consists of a Light Emitting Diode (LED), and the light receiving unit consists of a photodiode. When the light emitting unit projects a light beam, the projected light beam is reflected by an object proximate to the proximity sensor, and the reflected light beam is delivered to the light receiving unit. The light receiving unit absorbs the delivered light beams and thus recognizes that the object is proximate to the proximity sensor.
A representative function of the portable terminal using the proximity sensor includes a screen lock function and a screen unlock function. However, since the proximity sensor simply determines whether a user is proximate to the portable terminal, a function of the portable terminal utilizing the proximity sensor is inevitably limited.